There is only one daily newspaper in the country, l’Union, which is affiliated to the government. The independent press consist of approximately ten weekly or monthly publications. All of them suffer from financial instability and therefore publish irregularly. Besides this, there is the foreign press, which in fact accounts for 75 percent of all newspapers for sale.

"There is no actual censorship in Gabon. You can write what you want to in the newspapers. But there is another kind of censorship, an economic one. This means that the only gains we make are from selling the papers. That’s not enough," says Norbert Ngwa Mezui, president of the Free and Independent Press Editor’s Association and Editor-in-Chief of bimonthly Misamu newspaper.

The independent newspapers are known as belonging to the political opposition, which discourages the advertisers. There simply is no advertising market for newspapers. The result of this is a market where the majority of the titles are foreign - newspapers like Le Monde Diplomatique or the international Jeune Afrique can be easily found in Gabon.

"These newspapers add a plurality to the existing press. It’s good that they exist, however they are reserved for a small elite; the ones who can afford them and the ones who have a specific interest in political or financial news."

The presence of international newspapers in Gabon show that in theory it would be possible to publish independent newspapers. The problem is the lack of money, which makes the present media situation a precarious.

"There is money in the country, but the capitalists want to invest their money where it makes more money, and this is not within the independent press. Nobody is really interested in investing in this."

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